


Five Brothers

by Labradoodles_and_Muffins



Series: A Dancer, a Liar, and a Murderer (are all the same) [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 07:41:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1218028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Labradoodles_and_Muffins/pseuds/Labradoodles_and_Muffins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penelo had three blood brothers; Michael, Kerrin and Guin. Her other two brothers are Reks and Vaan, not related by blood but bound by love. Four that die + one that didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Brothers

She’s six and Guin pulls on her braids and laughs when she cries. She hates him for it and declares this to her mother later. Her mother who pats her on the head and says ‘don’t baby girl. don’t hate him for being afraid’. She doesn’t learn anything right then, that lesson will take a long time before she understands.

She’s eight and Kerrin, the only boy in the family with a jot of patience, sits with her while she scowls at the accounts for the shop. He tugs lightly on her braid and laughs when she swats him away. No one does it cruelly any more, it’s just how they show their affection now. Four hours later, when she bursts through the door of the shop and yells that the new employee is stealing from them, he smiles at her and she learns that she likes approval from her brothers.

She’s eleven and Michael takes her into the desert for the day. He hands her a knife, points at a dreamhare and tells her to kill it. She cries but she does it, messy, untrained, but effective. He nods but doesn’t smile, smiling would be wrong because she **killed** something, and tells her that she’s just provided the family with dinner. She learns how to temper empathy with pragmatism.

She’s thirteen and two new brothers join the family. They aren’t babies, though she’ll eventually call the younger that when he refuses to kill a dreamhare the first time she takes him to the desert. For now, the elder looks at her like she’s a boring picture; nice enough but not worth lingering over. The younger sullenly refuses to look at her and she’s sharply afraid that these boys, even though she’s known them for years, will change and she’ll be left out again, the gap between herself and her other brothers closed off by the new comers. She learns what her mother meant seven years ago.

She’s fourteen and they’re all dead, all but one and she holds onto him so tightly that she fears he’ll flee but she can’t do anything else. she etches their names into wood, stone, metal, anything that holds still long enough. She’s caught between the ache to sleep and see their faces again and the desperate fear of seeing them die every night. She learns how to hate and to fear and to shoulder duties no child should have to take on. She learns how to survive.


End file.
